64 Baby Boys Were Named After Rambo

This one is the MacGyver-topper, you guys. I thought it might be Cheetara, but no. It’s definitely Rambo.

Rambo as in vengeful Vietnam veteran John Rambo, the fictional character created by author David Morrell and portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the movies First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), and Rambo (2008). The cultural impact of the character was so great that “Rambo” is now found in dictionaries. Random House Dictionary, for instance, tells us that the noun Rambo refers to “a fanatically militant or violently aggressive person.”

How many baby boys in the U.S. were named Rambo after the movies started coming out? At least 64, according to the Social Security Administration:

1990: 6 baby boys named Rambo

1989: 6 baby boys named Rambo

1988: 9 baby boys named Rambo

1987: 7 baby boys named Rambo

1986: 13 baby boys named Rambo

1985: 18 baby boys named Rambo

1984: 5 baby boys named Rambo [debut]

1983: unlisted

Believe it or not, babies were named Rambo before the 1980s. For these Rambos, the name was likely a family surname. The surname, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, is “an old one in N.J. and Pennsylvania colonies of the U.S., originally Swedish, sometimes said to represent Swed. place name Ramberget, or to be from Fr. Huguenots who took refuge in Sweden.”

One afternoon while I was writing, my wife came home from a grocery store and said that she’d found a new kind of apple that she thought was delicious. Apples were the farthest thing from my mind while I struggled to find that character’s name, but politely I took a bite of the apple and discovered that it was in fact delicious. “What’s it called?” I asked. “Rambo,” she replied. This was in Pennsylvania, where the Rambo type of apple is grown and appreciated. Instantly, I recognized the sound of force.